Sue and I had a nice quiet Memorial Day Weekend. Friday evening we were invited up to Butch and Jen's new house for a cook out — slabs of meat on the grill with beer. Can't get much better than that!

Friday 05/28
As you'll see from the pictures, sunset was spectacular as their house sits on the side of the mountain.

This is actually the first time that we've had a chance to gather with them at their house as they are still working both outside and inside to finish, hoping to be done by Fall. Lots of projects left to do! Butch actually built a chicken coop just a couple of months ago, and they have about a dozen new chicks they are keeping in the heated garage for a little while longer before they put them out with the others.

Some other of their friends joined us for the cookout, and we all had a great time. Long night for us, though, because we stayed another hour and a half or so after everyone else had left. I think we were there until just before midnight....

Saturday 05/29
Saturday it started drizzling around 4:00 am, but cleared somewhat by the time Sue left to meet up with her friend Gail at the Deerfield Fairgrounds for holiday craft and antique fair. She texted me around noon as to how chilled they were. Not much better here as it was damp and cold and rainy most of the day. The house was so chilly that I actually got a fire going in the wood stove that we enjoyed through the evening.

Sunday 05/30
Sunday the rain kept up for the entire day, sometimes getting pretty heavy. So much for Memorial Day vacation for so many who had come up to the Lakes Region after all of this quarantine period we've been through this year for the covid pandemic situation. Sue headed back over to Butch and Jen's for a few hours to help Jen prep dozens and dozens of potatoes to be planted as seedlings in their garden.

Monday 05/31
When we got up Monday morning Memorial Day the mist quickly turned to drizzle, and except for a few dry patches kept that up all day. I couldn't run the wood stove, though, because Bob was scheduled to come Tuesday morning to clean the chimney. If it was just the roofers that would be coming back, it wouldn't have been an issue to have a fire Monday night.

Sue and I popped open a bottle of Chenin Blanc just after 4:00 pm, and sat in the living room to play some backgammon before we went into the kitchen to get dinner going. Since we had had such a big party event Friday evening, we had opted not to have our Sunday Dinner Party For Two, but rather move that to Monday evening.

I got all of the prep work done earlier while Sue had a long chat with her son Lucas so that all of the actual cooking went quickly. Sue had said that she felt like having shrimp for dinner, and so I fixed a marvelous Spicy Shrimp Curry In Coconut Milk And Apple over rice with a side of butter, garlic, and ginger root sauteed asparagus. Yup, that came out really nice.

We had a great time, but headed for bed early as both Bob and the roofing crew would be arriving around 8:00 am — that is unless it kept up raining....

The view from Butch and Jen's living room overlooks their newly created vegetable garden, and on to a distant view of Mt. Washington.

Post and beam interior showing the great progress they've made in the living room.

Sue really scrambled to get this picture when the sky lit up as the sun began to drop below the horizon!

It was getting really cold out, but Sue cracked open the living room sliders several times to catch the transition of the sun setting over the mountains to the left — west. She took almost a dozen pictures as the sky changed over the course of only about 10 minutes.

Sue took this picture of me with the backdrop of dusk settling over the mountains in the distance.

And just minutes later, a final explosion of color, and then we were left in total darkness.

Can't see the rain coming down Monday morning, but it was coming down....

Thought I could catch some of the rain coming off of the edge of the eve, but you just have to trust me when I say it was pretty constant.

Took awhile to get the shrimp peeled and starting the initial marinating, and asparagus ready, the the effort was well worth it.

Man it smelled good through the house as all of the spices in the dish heated.

Perfect....